The final qualifying session of the eleventh race in this season’s MotoGP championship saw Andrea Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa claim fourth and fifth place respectively for tomorrow’s starting grid. After notably improving performance in the morning’s practice session and setting a strong pace, neither rider could improve on their times in the qualifying session, timing in half a second behind Ben Spies, who claimed a surprising pole position.
With temperatures kinder than in yesterday’s sessions (27ºC, and 32ºC on the track), the second practice session saw Pedrosa and Dovizioso rapidly improve on Friday’s times, with laps of under 1’41’’. By the qualifying session, with the thermometer marking much higher temperatures, both riders were getting among the top places, -Pedrosa led the session for about half an hour, and Dovizioso got into a consistent race rhythm and, with the soft tyres, pushed ahead of his team-mate.
However, in the final laps neither managed to get into the fight for pole, which finally fell to local rider Ben Spies. Dovizioso finished 454 milliseconds behind the leader, while Pedrosa came in 532 milliseconds down, meaning they go into tomorrow’s race from the second row, in fourth and fifth positions respectively. The race starts at 21:00 (CET) tomorrow evening.
Dani Pedrosa, 1’40.637 sec, 54 laps, 228 km. >> Audio
“We improved our times quite a lot from yesterday and made some good progress with the machine set-up and race pace. In the final moments of qualifying though we couldn’t go any faster on the softer tyre and so we have to settle for the second row – which isn’t perfect – but still I think we can make a good start and compete at the front tomorrow. With these high track temperatures it looks like the harder option tyre will be the one to go with and we have a decent pace on this tyre, although I don’t know if all the riders will make the same choice. Tomorrow it will be a very tough race physically, and also for the tyres because it will be very difficult to control the tyre temperature in the race. I’m sure the American riders will be very strong, and also the riders who are normally at the front, so here maybe we will have more rivals to consider. Still, my feeling with the hard Bridgestone is good so I think we can do a good race tomorrow”.
Andrea Dovizioso, 1’40.559 sec, 55 laps, 232 km. >> Audio
“I’m satisfied with the front of the second row, especially because our race pace is fast – so I’m confident for tomorrow. It will be important to make a good start. I think it will be a tight group going into the first turns, and Spies and Nicky will be very determined in front of their home fans, but actually the fastest person in terms of race pace is Dani. He has a margin of two or three tenths compared to us so it will be a tough race because there isn’t much grip and you need to ride smoothly to exploit what grip there is – this can be difficult to do in a race situation. The team did a good job today, we improved the stability at the front a lot and we made a big improvement with the electronic set-up – especially with the traction control. I think the tyre choice will have to be the hard compound, and this means we look in pretty good shape for the race”.
